Compared to San Diego, San Jose city government looks competent, clean, and well-funded.
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We're working on it. ;-)
Meanwhile..
San Diego's Pension Crisis S.D.'s tab for lawyers: $10 million
Craig Gustafson
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER December 22, 2005
A new report shows that the city of San Diego has run up at least $10 million in outside legal bills since July 2004, most of which is directly related to the pension crisis.
The report, released yesterday by City Attorney Michael Aguirre, also details how much has been spent to provide legal representation for city officials asked to answer questions by federal investigators examining San Diego's pension system and finances.
"What's happening is we're spending more money to try to defend the wrongdoing than to undo the wrongdoing and correct it," Aguirre said. "Until we reverse that, we're not going to be on the road to progress."
It's not unusual for the city to hire counsel to help when special expertise is needed. The cost is much higher than if the City Attorney's Office handles the case.
The complexity of the city's financial problems has caused the use of outside counsel to escalate, the report said. Specifically, the city has retained firms specializing in securities law and issuing bonds.
In all, the report shows the city has been billed about $10.4 million for outside lawyers in the past 18 months. Of that amount, about $7.1 million has been billed for pension-related issues. Other legal expenses were for unrelated cases, such as eminent domain litigation.
The report is not comprehensive. It examined only invoices processed by the City Attorney's Office.